Monday's program Ken gives you the secret to get a free test drive of Microsoft's Vista, how to store two DVDs on one thumbdrive, who are the Most Influential Individuals in Tech, Amanda Congdon goes on the road, VCs loving Video Startups, the Oprah Channel starts on XM Satellite Radio, will Jericho keep alive and a peek at TechMeme.
Getting Vista for Free
 Microsoft seems to have allowed the great unwashed the chance to play with its trial versions of Vista.
The Vista 5728 build became 'publically available' over the weekend. Microsoft says it decided to release Vista to the riff raff because it has a number of improvements and updates from RC1, but has not been put through the same internal testing process as RC1 and therefore may be unstable......... <Download beta Vista>
Two DVDs on One Thumb Drive
 Corsair has its new rubber shielded USB stick, now at 8GB size. It is available as of today at Newegg for $155. It is a lot of flash memory for not so much money. It is the only one that can store more than a single 4.7 GB DVD on it. I think this was the ultimate goal....... <Corsair 8gb USB Stick>
50 Most Influential Individuals in Tech
 Who are the driving forces in the tech industry? The Silicon Valley CEOs? The regulators and academics? Or perhaps the lesser known men-behind-the-men?
For leading Microsoft into the post-Bill Gates era, Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at the software giant, has been named the most Influential Individuals in Tech according to a panel of experts decided the annual poll by voting on three factors - global influence, decision-making prowess and longevity.
Amanda Congdon is Back
 Amanda Congdon, the former host of the Rocketboom video blog, has taken her latest project on the road across America. Amanda Across America will see her travel across the States in a hybrid vehicle, posting videos on the way. Congdon's new project is sponsored by Environmental Countdown, a group that uses online video to highlight the issues of climate change.
VCs loving Video Startups
 A growing number of venture capital investments seem to be finding their way into the coffers of young video-related companies these days. Almost a third of the “digital media” companies that received venture capital funding during August are focused on producing, enabling, transporting, or hosting video. A total of 36 digital media companies announced funding rounds in August, of which fourteen were video-related. Video-related companies racked up a total of $118.4 million in VC funding during August, or 28.8 percent of the $415.4 million total doled out to digital media companies. Funding rounds for such companies during August weren't unusually large, but they were numerous. Some of the largest ones included:
- BIAP Systems Inc. of Plano, Texas, which provides video servers and other software to content developers, took a cool $20 million from Sevin Rosen Funds and SCP Partners.
- The high-definition (HD) video surveillance company CoVi Technologies, based in Austin, Texas, collected $15 million from Polycom Inc. and a small group of VCs.
- The Herndon, Va.-based Ruckus Network, which sells VOD servers for college campuses, collected $13.7 million in new funding from Battery Ventures , Eastward Capital Partners , Pinnacle Ventures, and Shelter Capital Partners.
- Burlingame, Calif.-based personal video search company MeeVee took $8 million from Bay Area Equity Fund. MeeVee provides personalized search for TV programs and online video programming.
Oprah Channel on XM Satellite Radio
 Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey launched her own channel, Oprah and Friends, Monday morning on XM Satellite Radio, with shows hosted by her and a collection of popular personalities from her television show, including her best friend, Gayle King, fitness expert Bob Greene and poet Maya Angelou. The station will broadcast 24 hours a day, with highlights of the shows replayed every weekend. Oprah Winfrey tells CNBC that her new "Oprah and Friends" channel XM radio is not a new venture, so much as a return to her first career in radio...... <Watch Oprah on CNBC>
Jericho has lots of Potential
 If 'Jericho' isn't the most anticipated new series of the year, it isn't from lack of trying by CBS. It's certainly the most heavily advertised. The show tells the story of a small, isolated Kansas town called Jericho in a near future where the whole world gets wiped out (or is it?). The show's premiere told the story of the town's first seventeen hours after its residents spot a mushroom cloud roaring into the sky from the direction of Denver, the nearest major metropolis. Television, radio, telephone, and eventually just about everything else goes out. Soon they're all in the dark, both figuratively and literally. What happened? Was it an accident? An attack? Is there anything else left? Jericho works when it sticks to the eerie surreality of a nuclear attack.
Today's Site To Peek At:
 TechMeme is a site that bloggers and others check frequently for news. It is an entirely automated web service that looks at what bloggers are talking about, and linking to, and decides what is news based on that analysis. In many ways it is an anti-Digg. Humans have no say in what appears on the TechMeme homepage, other than by blogging about it.
TechMeme is focused on technology news. It, along with sister sites Memeorandum (politics), WeSmirch (celebrity gossip) and BallBug (baseball news), is one of the more important technical innovations that has come out of the new web. The company has come up with a new idea, advertisements delivered via RSS. NOT advertisements embedded withing RSS feeds, but actually using RSS as the delivery mechanism. You can see the initial ads, which are for sale on TechMeme, in the right sidebar on the home page of the site. The ads are also shown in the image to the left. Advertisers send the ad to Techmeme via RSS (typically this would come from a blog, but any content would work). If the advertiser wants to change the ad, they simply change the RSS content.
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